pre-wired internet in apartment - placement of gateway and unable to get ethernet in anyof the rooms

[triank14]

Hello,

I have xfinity internet which I setup using the self kit. Gateway/router Arris TG862G is in the living room. I have two rooms adjacent to the each side of living room (living room is in the middle). I have my TV (netflix streaming over wireless) in one of the rooms and I use my laptop a lot in the living room as well as master bed room. I have about 30mbps in the living room while I get about 5mbps in the rooms. I was told that the apartment is pre-wired for xfinity internet. I tried connecting ethernet port to the TV but none of the ethernet ports in any of the rooms are getting the internet. I recently located the patch panel (PS: I am not very sure what it is called) Image of closet internet panel

So, I tried relocating the gateway to the patch panel and connect through the splitter). Initially the main cat5 was connected to the center/input. I removed and connected to the single end of the splitter. Then connected one of the cat5 to the center/input and the other to the gateway. I am still unable to get internet through the wired connection in any of the rooms.

Question1: Is the gateway placement right? Should it be in the closet? Would it not reduce the signal? or should it be placed in the living room which is the central location in my house?

Question2: Please advice how do I get to access wired internet ??
Do I need a switch to get the wired internet ? I notice a blue cable which is cut with the open ended wires. Is this the master ethernet cable which needs to be connected to the gateway?

Thanks in advance!!

 

[bill001g]

Hard to tell but I suspect you have both phone and lan jacks in the panel. If the black areas on the bottom part of the photo are RJ45 jacks then you just need to wire things correctly. Likely just some short cat5e patch cables.

You need to put some equipment in that panel. You could mount the arris in there but as you suspect it will affect the wireless. Because you are using coax you could leave the router in the living room and connect the lan back to the panel via the wall jacks. You would then place a small switch in the pannel.

In either case you would run cable from each of the black lan jacks to the equipment you place in the panel box. It looks like you have 6 connections to other rooms so you would likely need a 8 port switch.

They put these nice panels in houses but so many forget a extremely important thing...a power connection. You will need to find a way to get power for the device you decide to place in the panel. Kinda sucks that you will have to leave the panel cover off to get the power cord in.